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Raised Garden Bed

For my garden this year, I’m building a couple of raised garden bed. The beds are pretty simple construction, a couple of boards on each side nailed to 4″x4″ posts in each corner.

My plan was to build the beds two feet tall to hopefully avoid a certain predator. Ideally the garden is big enough that it will prevent Kingston from hopping up and digging in it.

My initial plan was to use 2″x6″ boards on the side, but I didn’t realize how expensive that would be, nor how big a 2″ wide piece of wood really is, they would have been overkill. I ended up using a 3/4″ x 12″ boards for the side and an 8′ piece was still around $20 each.

I bought all Redwood, mainly because I didn’t find Cedar at my local Home Depot, not sure if it was my poor searching skills or they didn’t carry it.

Total Lumber came out to just over $100

(1) 8′ long, 4″x4″ posts ($30)

(4) 8′ long, 3/4″ x 12″ boards site ($20/ea)

Also for just 50¢ a cut, they will cut the wood in store, the first two cuts are free. This is really helpful especially for bringing 8′ pieces of wood home. So I had them cut most of the wood basically in half, I still had some sawing to do at home but much easier.

One thing to think about, a tall garden bed means you need to fill it with more dirt. Now thankfully in my backyard there used to be a small hill where I was putting my garden, so I had a fair amount of dirt for the first bed. I built a sifter which I shoveled all the dirt through to remove rocks. The sifter is just a mesh wire stapled down to a frame. I used the same mesh wire for the bottom of the garden bed to prevent gophers or moles coming.

To figure out how much dirt you will need, a little math, a 2′ wide by 4′ long and 2′ high garden bed.

2' x 4' x 2' = 16 cubic feet of dirt!

The 2 cu ft bags cost $3-$6, so if you need to buy 16 bags, you might be looking at spending $100 on dirt, sorry I mean on organic gardening soil, sounds more expensive that way. Plus hauling around the bags is no fun either, so plan accordingly.

Here are a couple of photos of the finished bed, it really is just boards nailed to a post, though I did use some wood glue. Pretty basic construction, but functional. I think if it starts to bend out I can add some brackets or a stabilizing board.